WELCOME

* UPDATE! * We’d love to know what you think of our toolkit. Please take the time to answer these (short!) questions by following this link to help us improve our work https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/L33HGDR

Background Context

Hello and welcome to our wellness kit! We are a collection of practitioners who run a youth advocacy group called Brighter Futures as part of Praxis Community Projects.

Brighter Futures is a group of young leaders united by a passion to improve the lives of young migrants. Brighter Futures members are all young migrants, who have faced hardship and struggles from a young age. Some are asylum seekers, some refugees, others undocumented or with irregular status. The group members work together to find a brighter future for themselves as well as for other young migrants.

We noticed that young migrants were experiencing complex mental health issues that were affecting many elements of their everyday lives, and we wanted to help them find ways to better cope with the symptoms they were experiencing.

In order to complement the counselling and therapeutic work some of the young people were receiving, we delivered a set of ‘skills for wellbeing’ workshops, and this kit is the result of our learning. You will notice that the activities in this kit are all centred on a common creative thread.

New Activities Added

We’ve added some new activities to the toolkit- look out for those marked *NEW* throughout the website. If you would like to order an activity kit that provides information on some of our wellbeing activities as well as printable worksheets and handouts, please email emma.gardiner@praxis.org.uk and we’ll pop them in the post to you.

Using the toolkit

Given that we could all do with focusing on improving our wellbeing from time to time, the activities in our kit are designed with all young migrants in mind, whether they have a mental health diagnosis or not. It is important to note that this is not a therapeutic guide, but a collection of activities that introduce ways of staying well to young people.

The activities in this kit have a focus on the future, not the past. They are short, practical and focused, and have tangible outcomes that allow young people to feel that they have gained skills from the sessions.

Young migrants don’t always have the luxury of choice in their lives. These activities have a strong emphasis on choice, and the young people should be encouraged to only follow up on techniques they feel suit them in order for them to have choice and control throughout.

You can use the kit however you like, whether as a series of workshops, or just the odd activity that you feel would work well with your group. We really value your feedback-if you have time, we would be grateful if you could answer a few short questions so that we can continue to improve our toolkit https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/L33HGDR